The machines for the manufacture of glass articles such as the ones heretofore mentioned have been well-known for a long time, and they consist, basically, of a gyratory table provided with a plurality of mold supporters--carrying respective molds for the manufacture of glass articles--which gyrate simultaneously with the table, passing through a number of stations, among which are stations for charging, stations for pressing and cooling of articles, extracting stations, and stations for the cooling of molds or moldings, so as to achieve--in a complete cycle--the production of a finished article already cooled to be taken out of the machine and passed onto a belt conveyor, as well as the further total cooling of the mold, in order to renew the cycle with the charging of another glass gob, thus continuing the manufacture of articles.
It is well-known, however, that one of the main problems of this type of machines for the manufacture of glass articles is the cooling of both, the articles themselves and the molds or moldings, wherefore it is necessary that said machines contain a relatively high number of stations, therefore being usual to provide them with a charging station, a pressing station--located after the charging station--, three article-cooling stations, one extracting station and two mold-cooling stations. The number of stations specified above is referred to a machine composed of eight molds, but the number of stations--both for the cooling of articles and for the cooling of molds--may vary, depending upon the number of molds of the machine--which may--consist of 8, 12, 16, 24 or 36 (where the two last machines include 2 or 3 forming pistons and a double or triple intermittent movement)--. The article-cooling stations are particularly necessary, since the article is cooled at each station solely and exclusively during the time such article remains at said each station, and thus, for instance, a 12-mold machine must have 5 article-cooling stations, a 16-mold machine must have 7 article-cooling stations, and so on; so that the number of article-cooling stations in fact occupies half of the total room available in a machine, circumstance, this one, which entails certain disadvantages, on account of the considerable reduction of the rate of production.
If the article-cooling and the mold-cooling stations could be reduced in a considerable proportion, a machine with fewer molds could produce a greater number of articles-per-mold, thereby increasing its efficiency. Nevertheless, all attempts performed thus far for attaining a reduction of the number of cooling stations in a machine designed for the manufacture of glass articles of the nature stated above have been fruitless, since all of them were bases on providing cooling solely and exclusively during the time the article remains at the station, wherefore the special cooling devices designed thus far have been rather unuseful for reducing the number of cooling stations. Among these devices are the cooling hoods--which are placed in the manner of a cover over the mold at each of the molding-cooling stations--, through which an air blast is caused to circulate--entering through the top part of the hood and getting out through either annular or lateral chutes or channels--, thereby attaining the acceleration of the cooling of the mold, but not achieving an important reduction of the number of cooling stations; since each cooling station contains a cooling device entering and getting out as the mold arrives and stays at the station, thus limiting the cooling process solely and exclusively to the time the molds remain at each cooling station.
Therefore, as it may be realized from the aforesaid, specialists have for long time searched for a means for increasing the efficiency of the article--cooling process in a machine for the manufacture of glass articles, and the devices created thus far have not accomplished this purpose.